2 parties headed by South African-Indians enter poll fray

Two new political parties led by South African-Indians aiming to garner votes in Indians- dominated areas are among 126 parties that have registered for local government elections scheduled for August 3 this year.
The list of registered parties released by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) of South Africa includes new parties -- Minorities of South Africa (Mosa) and the Democratic Liberal Congress (DLC).
Mosa President Vassie Govender and the party's national chairperson Gary Moodley are both former representatives of the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), while DLC leader Patrick Pillay is a former Minority Front (MF) politician.
Mosa will be fielding 25 councillors in six of the mainly Indians-dominated areas of Durban, where the first Indian indentured labourers landed in 1860.

Mosa has been seeking support by highlighting the alleged side-lining of Indians in various areas, including housing and employment.
The party has called for the scrapping of affirmative action, employment equity and the quota system which prioritises Black African South Africans.

The Indian community was for a long time represented by the MF, started by late Amichand Rajbansi, who was the chairman of the House of Delegates in the apartheid-era parliament which had separate houses for Indians, Coloureds and the ruling white minority, but nothing for the majority Black community.
After Nelson Mandela was elected South Africa's first democratic president, Rajbansi entered into an alliance with the African National Congress (ANC) in KwaZulu-Natal province, where the majority of South Africa's 1.4 million citizens of Indian descent live.

Following the charismatic Rajbansi's death in 2011, his wife Shameen Thakur Rajbansi faced revolt within the ranks amid huge power struggles and defections from the MF, which has left her as the solitary representative of the party in government.
DLC founder Pillay was a long-standing member of the MF before breaking away last week to form his own party after expressing dissatisfaction with the in-fighting.